Enabling Azure Remote App

You can think of Azure Remote App as basically Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as a service. At this point in time you will need to enable Azure Remote App using the ‘classic’ portal. Here’s how you do it.

Firstly, login to the Azure portal and scroll down the options on the left until you identify the option for Remote App that appears like:

Select this.

Typically, when you select this you will see that no current RemoteApp collection has been configured as shown above.

Select the Create a RemoteApp Collection link.

This will display the configuration dialog as shown above. Enter a collection name, region, plan and template image.

The region is the data center in which you wish to host this Remote App service. Typically you’ll want to select the region that is closest to you.

There are currently four pricing tiers and you can find more information about these here:

You can then select from the template image to use for the remote server. You have the choice of a number of preconfigured images or you can use your own if it has been suitably prepared. In this case the Office Professional Plus (30-day trial) will be select to provide Office applications to users.

When ready, select the Create RemoteApp Collection at the bottom of the page.

You should now see that RemoteApp collection has commenced creation as shown above. This process will take 15 – 30 minutes typically.

You’ll see that there is also the option to create a RemoteApp collection with a Virtual Network. This allows the RDS server to be placed on an existing Azure LAN so it can share other Azure resources. This article won’t cover this specifically, it will be covered in an upcoming article.

You may also see that by default you receive a 30 day trial of RemoteApp. If you want to upgrade to paid subscriptions immediately ensure you select the option provided at the top of the screen as shown above.

After the service has been enabled you will a check mark as shown above. Select the service name to view the settings.

Under the User Access option you will a list of any users who have access. You can add users that have Microsoft Account or if they are part of the Azure tenant already.

Under the Publishing option you can see all the applications that will be available to users. These applications are those that are currently on the virtual machine image used.

You can make additional options available by selecting the Publish button and either manually entering the directory path or you can select from the start menu as shown above.

Users can then use the appropriate RemoteApp application on their device to access this instance of RemoteApp and run the applications. Above is an example of the Windows 10 Universal App. Remote App device clients can be downloaded from: